Eloy's fingers slammed the spacebar, double-tapping the macro key a millisecond later. The boss's massive greatsword clipped through his avatar's shoulder, missing the hitbox by a single pixel.
"Frame-perfect dodge." He didn't look up from the screen. "Buffer the roll right when the animation locks. That skips the second phase entirely."
On his second monitor, the chat was a blur of text. Emotes spammed so fast the application lagged.
[Slayer_007]: GOD GAMER
[PraiseTheSun]: HE ACTUALLY DID IT
[TrollKing99]: I WAS HERE
The boss health bar vanished. The victory screen triggered. Eloy let out a long, ragged breath and slumped back into his gaming chair. Two hours and forty minutes. A new personal best for the Any% run of Chronicle of the Fading Crest.
"That's the run, guys," Eloy said. His throat felt like sandpaper. He grabbed an energy drink can, weighed its hollow aluminum shell, and tossed it into the overflowing bin with identical cans. "World record pace. We submit the VOD tomorrow."
He clicked the save button out of habit, right exactly on the final frame allowed by the speedrunning community guidelines. He closed the game client. The chat was still moving at lightning speed, showering him with digital cheers and donations.
The chat was already a vertical smear of color, usernames dissolving into emotes dissolving into more usernames. He'd read that blur every night for three years. It was the closest thing he had to ambient noise.
"I'm exhausted," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Stream's over. See you all tomorrow."
He hit the 'End Stream' button. The second monitor went dark. The absolute silence of his room hit him instantly.
He pushed himself upright. His joints popped loud enough to hear.
Five steps to the bed. He'd counted them before: on bad nights, it felt like fifty. Tonight it just felt like five.
He didn't change his clothes. Didn't set an alarm. Didn't check his phone, which had been on silent for so long the battery indicator had turned red without anyone to tell him.
The mattress caught him face-first. He closed his eyes.
The PC fans slowed to idle.
Outside, a streetlight flickered once and held.
Eloy Vance's chest did not rise again.
No one would find him for three days. Maybe four, if his mother didn't check the streaming schedule.
Then, a shove.
A physical force hit his chest, pushing him backward.
Eloy hit the ground hard. His hands scraped against sharp, wet grass. He choked on a lungful of air that smelled overpoweringly of rain and crushed pine. He coughed violently, curling into a ball, his hands gripping the soil.
Soil. Real soil.
He opened his eyes. The light was blinding. He squinted, raising a dirt-streaked hand to shield his face. The ceiling of his apartment was gone. The LED lights were gone. Above him stretched a sky of fractured, impossible blue, cut by the towering spires of a white stone castle.
Eloy scrambled backward until his back hit a cold stone wall. The architecture was impossible to mistake. Obsidian gargoyles perched on the parapets. The vast, manicured courtyard structured like a gladiatorial arena.
The Royal Academy. The central hub world of Chronicle of the Fading Crest.
"What kind of dream..." He reached up and pinched his own cheek. He twisted the skin hard.
A sharp spike of pain flared. He tasted copper. He had bitten his tongue when he fell.
He didn't wake up.
A translucent blue rectangle materialized in the air, directly in his line of sight.
[ WELCOME TO AETHELGARD ]
Eloy stared at the floating text. He waved a hand through it. His fingers met no resistance, but the screen merely rippled like water and reformed.
[SYSTEM BOOT COMPLETE.]
[USER: Eloy Vance.]
[STATUS: Deceased (Earth) → Transmigrated (Aethelgard).]
He read the third line. He read it again.
Deceased.
Back in his apartment: the monitors dark. The locked door. His phone on silent on the desk, unanswered for weeks. His mother's name sitting at the top of an unread thread six months old.
No one was looking for him.
If he was dead on Earth, he was completely, utterly erased.
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: Achieve 100% World Completion. Beat the World Record.]
[REWARD: Permanent resurrection.]
[WARNING: Failure or death results in soul deletion.]
[Do you accept?]
Two glowing buttons appeared below the text. YES and NO.
Eloy looked at the options. He reached for the glowing prompt. He'd pressed YES on a thousand in-game prompts. Never once hesitated.
This one, he stared at for four seconds, long enough that the grass was leaving wet marks on his knees.
He pressed it anyway.
[ Class Unlocked: The Speedrunner ]
The notification faded, instantly replaced by a smaller, narrower window docking itself to the bottom right of his peripheral vision.
White text began to scroll upward. Fast.
[PraiseTheSun]: wait the stream is back??
[LMAO_cat]: bro why are you standing in a medieval courtyard
[TrollKing99]: THESE GRAPHICS LOOKS SICK DUDEE
[Slayer_007]: is this a NEW GAME
Eloy froze. Every single username matched his Earth regulars. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat seized up.
Before he could form a word, a red system prompt flashed directly over the chat box.
[ Chat will accompany you on this journey. Keep them entertained. ]
[ DON'T MENTION YOUR SITUATION OR THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES. ]
The red text vanished, leaving only the rapid-fire scrolling of his audience.
Ten years of muscle memory overrode his panic. The streamer instinct kicked in, raw and undeniable. He forced a smirk. He opened his mouth to deliver his standard intro, to make a joke about the hyper-realistic VR setup he was supposedly using.
The chat beat him to it.
[IsoldeSimp47]: WAIT. Is Isolde here?? She's HERE??
[PraiseTheSun]: ISOLDE ROUTE WHEN
[LMAO_cat]: chat we need to make him go talk to her RIGHT NOW
[TrollKing99]: GO TO THE LIBRARY
[IsoldeSimp47]: FIND HER
Eloy read the names. The smirk died on his face.
Isolde.
Isolde Reichenbach. The daughter of the imprisoned Dark Lord. The ultimate antagonist of the game's official timeline. The character whose magic explicitly targeted and destroyed the player's save files if she killed them.
She had no romance route in any of the three games. She was a walking execution order.
The chat interface began to glow, a small poll forming at the top of the box. They were already voting on his first movement.
The poll bar for Library hit 94%.
The timer read: 0:02.
Eloy's mouth was still open around a word he hadn't finished saying.
0:01.
Somewhere in Aethelgard, Isolde Reichenbach was sitting in a library, completely unaware that four hundred strangers had just unanimously decided her fate.
[ VOTE COMPLETE. CHAT HAS DECIDED. ]
Eloy closed his eyes.
I am going to die again.